A few coats of paint just earned its place as a potential addition to your home's fire safety plan – and it might also score you a break on your insurance premium!

Contego International, Inc. of Rochester, IN (http://www.contegointernational.com/), manufacturers a fire-resistant, intumescent interior paint. The makers designed it to tame the flames – and buy firefighters more time to make the scene of a commercial or residential fire.

"The longer the fire burns, the more this stuff swells up," said Tony Scott, Contego International's executive vice president of corporate development.

Contego's paint is designed to expand when exposed to flames. As it gets thicker, it forms a hard char barrier to block the fire from the wood structure.

Scott showcased the paint's effectiveness by blow-torching a wood paddle painted with Contego's fire-resistant formula. "You can see how it's getting thicker," he demonstrated, shutting off the blow-torch and scraping away the scorched paint to reveal the untouched wood.

In each set, the interior of one structure was painted with standard white latex paint, while the other was painted with Contego's fire-resistant paint.

Olive Branch, MS, firefighters stacked pallets and other combustibles inside both of the 8x8x8 structures, setting them on fire.

Five minutes into the burn, the one with the standard latex paint started flashing – fully engulfed. The one with Contego's fire-resistant paint contained the fire. We even spotted flames licking the painted wall, then disappearing as the paint's char barrier snuffed them out.

11 minutes and 41 seconds into the burn, the latex-painted structure finally collapsed in a heap of ashes.

The Contego fire-resistant-painted structure was burning, but still intact. In fact, Contego's fire-resistant paint contained the fire for more than 22 minutes.

"This is going to make your house a lot more safe and sound," said ProShot Construction's Casey Stein.

In our live television test of Contego's paint on larger structures (8x8x12, furnished), it contained the fire again, keeping the structure intact for more than eight minutes. Firefighters agreed it would definitely slow the spread of a fire from room-to-room or property-to-property.

"There is a discernable difference," said Capt. Dave Taylor of the Olive Branch Fire Department. "It lasted a lot longer with the Contego paint to give the firefighters time, a little extra time to get there.

"My concern is how the paint may reflect heat. It did appear to be hotter in the structure with the Contego paint. I'd like to see what it would do on drywall."

To test on drywall, we would have had to build larger structures with more square footage to document a difference in burn rates. That would have been outside of our budget -- in both money and in limited broadcast time.

Scott recommended conducting the test on plywood to achieve a faster, discernable, visual difference in burn rate for TV.

"It would have worked as well, if not better, on drywall than on the wood," said Scott.

Contego's paint costs about $55 a gallon, compared to the $12-45 average cost of a gallon of latex or oil paint.

Click here to see Andy Wise's page on WMCTV.COM for all of his previous product tests.

A few coats of paint just earned its place as an addition to your home's fire safety plan – and it might also score you a break on your insurance premium!

Contego International, Inc. of Rochester, IN (http://www.contegointernational.com/), manufacturers a fire-resistant, intumescent interior paint. The makers designed it to tame the flames – and buy firefighters more time to make the scene of a commercial or residential fire.

"The longer the fire burns, the more this stuff swells up," said Tony Scott, Contego International's executive vice president of corporate development.

Contego's paint is designed to expand when exposed to flames. As it gets thicker, it forms a hard char barrier to block the fire from the wood structure.

Scott showcased the paint's effectiveness by blow-torching a wood paddle painted with Contego's fire-resistant formula. "You can see how it's getting thicker," he demonstrated, shutting off the blow-torch and scraping away the scorched paint to reveal the untouched wood.

In each set, the interior of one structure was painted with standard white latex paint, while the other was painted with Contego's fire-resistant paint.

Olive Branch, MS, firefighters stacked pallets and other combustibles inside both of the 8x8x8 structures, setting them on fire.

Five minutes into the burn, the one with the standard latex paint started flashing – fully engulfed. The one with Contego's fire-resistant paint contained the fire. We even spotted flames licking the painted wall, then disappearing as the paint's char barrier snuffed them out.

11 minutes and 41 seconds into the burn, the latex-painted structure finally collapsed in a heap of ashes.

The Contego fire-resistant-painted structure was burning, but still intact. In fact, Contego's fire-resistant paint contained the fire for more than 22 minutes.

{***LEAVE ROOM HERE FOR THE RESULTS OF THE LIVE EVENT***}

"There is a discernable difference," said Capt. Dave Taylor of the Olive Branch Fire Department. "It lasted a lot longer with the Contego paint to give the firefighters time, a little extra time to get there."

"This is going to make your house a lot more safe and sound," said ProShot Construction's Casey Stein.

Contego's paint costs about $55 a gallon, compared to the $12-45 average cost of a gallon of latex or oil paint.

"Yeah, but what price do you put on something that might help save your property or lives?" asked Stein.